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Nonfiction

Sure, you played Oregon Trail on a computer when you were younger. If you were lucky, you made it to Fort Laramie where you flipped the disk to continue playing.

How much history do you remember from the game and how close was it to the real thing? What was it truly like to trek across the wilderness of the Oregon Trail with your relatives and all your worldly possessions? Find out in these books:

The great thing about Pi Day is that it gives people like me the chance to celebrate something we do not understand in the least with something we understand so well it amounts to genetic memory; namely Pi and pie, respectively.

Have you heard of Pogue's Basics? They're handy little books from David Pogue that fill in all the blanks of what you've learned in your life. One of them is all about technology and has handy tips that even one of our Technology Trainers didn't know. I recently read the one about life, and I'm using several of his tips now on a daily basis. If I wasn't a know-it-all before, I definitely am now!

For readers, one of the more gratifying developments in the last several decades is that many historians have shifted their perspective from a bird's eye view of great men and events (and it was almost invariably men) to a ground level view of the way great events have affected, and were affected by, what in a less enlightened era were sometimes called "common folk."

Basil is basil, right? Not if you're reading The Illustrated Cook's Book of Ingredients. You'll learn the difference between Purple Ruffle and African Blue, and ten other types of basil with this guide. This handy book is made by the same people who make the DK Eyewitness series, which means it is highly visual and thoroughly informational. The Illustrated Cook's Book includes both common and exotic ingredients split into 10 major categories.

Be proud of me - I can now understand what they're talking about during the weather segment on the news. I can read a weather map, recognize how the warm and cold front is coming in, and stun my friends and family with big, impressive weather words. You can too if you read The Extreme Weather Survival Manual by Dennis Mersereau. It's a glossy, beautiful book made up of infographics, photos, and charts.

A very well-adjusted and successful highschooler recently told me, "Smart is the new dumb," which doesn't make much sense in any context but high school. It seems that a generation of young people have come to the revolutionary notion that intelligence is a good thing. I don't know about you, but when I was in high school, it wasn't cool to get good grades. It wasn't cool to learn for the sake of learning. Consequently, I knew a lot of really smart people who pretended that the only thing they had on their mind was their hair. Thankfully things have changed for the better which is probably at least partially responsible for the fact that some of the best writing being done today is science writing.

For those who remember and loved Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story", I've got a book suggestion for you: The Untold Civil War published by National Geographic. You'll get the rest of the story on things like the first pre-sized clothing, the rise of the U.S. Postal Service, and the real reason Abe Lincoln aged so much during the war. Check it out.